Cleansing bars have historically been made from salts of fatty acids (soaps). They can also be made from surfactants (syndet bars), or they can be made from a combination of soaps and surfactants (combars). Typically, the soaps and/or surfactants have been the dominate ingredient in cleansing bars.
As the cost of raw materials increases, such as oil, the cost of soaps and surfactants increase. With increasing costs, the profitability of cleansing bars decreases. It would be desirable to replace the high cost materials with lower cost materials and still deliver a desired level of cleaning and lathering.
Attempts have been made to use clay and talc in bars, but just adding in talc and/or clay does not result in acceptable bars. For example, see Table 1 in WO2006/094586A1 in which talc and/or clay were used to make bars. The bars made from these compositions had no structural integrity or were too brittle.
While it would be desirable to use clay and/or talc in the manufacture of a cleansing bar, additional design is needed to develop a bar with commercially desirable properties for structural integrity, lathering, cracking, texture, and use-up rate.